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Saturday, November 14, 2015

Diablo 3 - How to prepare for 2.4 by malendariel

I managed to try a few builds out on the PTR and figured I'd share
some thoughts on how to prepare for 2.4 (no firm release date yet). As
usual this mainly applies to people who will be playing non-seasonal.
Note that there's no season-only items for 2.4. The only benefit of
doing 2.4 will be to unlock stash tabs and some cosmetic items - they're
pretty cool so I'll definitely be doing some season play, but not exclusively. For all the details check out the official patch notes.

1. Save up your crafting/bounty materials

You'll need lots of crafting mats if you want to create some shiny
new items using Kanai's Cube. You'll also want to cube some of the new
legendary powers. Do some bounties and store the mats, you'll need quite
a few. Also save up some Ramaladni's Gifts so you can stick sockets on
your new weapons.

2. Save these sets

The below sets, with the exception of Istvan's Paired Blades, are
pretty useless at the moment, but will be seeing a substantial buff in
2.4. The Legacy of Nightmares ring set will be quite interesting, but I
don't think they'll be able to balance the power across all the classes.
Start saving them if you have them.

Legacy of Nightmares ring set (Litany of the Undaunted and The Wailing Host)

Endless Walk ring/amulet set (The Compass Rose and The Traveler's Pledge)

Istvan's Paired Blades (Little Rogue and The Slanderer)

Thorns of the Invoker set (Crusader only)

3. Prepare to replace these items

You might have beautifully rolled ancient versions of the below
items. Unfortunately most of them will no longer be BIS (best in slot).
Newly dropped versions of these items have substantially more powerful
stats on them. Don't save unidentified versions of these - the stats
will only appear on ones that drop after 2.4 goes live. If you save up
lots of bounty crafting mats then you can use them to reroll these items
and they'll get the new stats on them (and it might be ancient if
you're lucky).

4. Clean up your stash

There are an incredible amount of new items landing in 2.4 - clean out your stash and your mules. Be rutheless!

5. Level up some gems

There will be a new Kanai's Cube recipe which consumes a legendary
gem (and some other mats) in order to add some stats to an ancient item.
You can determine the stat based on what other gems you include in the
cube - Ruby for Str, Topaz for Int, Emerald for Dex, and Amethyst for
Vit. The amount of the stat that gets added depends on the level of the
legendary gem you use in the recipe. For example if you added some
Emeralds and a level 40 gem, you will be able to add 200 Dex to an item.
If you used a level 80 gem you will be able to add 400 dex to an item.
You can only buff ancient items. If you find an item with better stats,
you'll need to farm another gem and buff the upgraded item. Because of
this you'll need a lot of extra gems - you might as well get a head
start on leveling them now. If you need extra gems to drop, take them
all out of your stash and put them on another character. Then when you
complete a greater rift you'll start getting additional gems dropping
again. Level these up as high as you can so you have a bunch of them
ready for 2.4.

6. Farm some gold

In 2.4 you'll be able to "empower" a greater rift. In order to do
this you'll need to spend some gold. The amount depends on the level of the greater rift you're doing. If you complete the greater rift on time, you'll get 4 gem upgrade chances instead of the usual 3.

7. Save up some Bovine Bardiches and Puzzle Rings

Empowered rifts will need a lot of gold. Put together a gold find set
to make the most of your puzzle rings. The new action combat feature
provides some pretty hefty XP bonuses. The Bovine Bardiche can be put in
the cube and it will open a special cow level. Aside from netting you a
heft amount of legendaries and XP pools, the density for these levels
is extremely high. On the PTR I got about half a paragon level (granted
only level 975) by earning a huge massacre bonus on this level.

8. Misc notes

Monks will need to focus on Physical Resist even more for their
gear, as most rift guardians and other mobs have had their elements
moved to Physical. The Mara's Kaleidoscope amulet will not be quite as
good in 2.4.

String of ears looks like it is getting changed retrospectively.
This doesn't happen very often, but usually when it does the range gets
rerolled again. This means if you have one with 30% (range being
25%-30%) then when the patch lands and it gets changed to a power
instead of a secondary roll, it might not end up as the max value in the
range. It looks like this belt will be dropped to 20%-25% (the patch
notes are confusing for this).